Supporting students with their maths studies can positively impact university retention and rankings
Enhance student experience and retention, as well as university rankings, through closing the quantitative skills gap.
The quantitative skills gap is prevalent within higher education, and there is a clear, identified need for a ‘broad’ application of e-learning methods designed around student empowerment to help close the gap for all students (Webb, Watson & Cook, 2018). It is not just the students who will benefit from the closure of the quantitative skills gap.
The quantitative gap affects student attrition rates at colleges and universities around the world, with first year students in particular failing the mathematical components of their studies (Snead, Walker & Loch, 2022). The link that is somewhat overlooked, is the impact that this quantitative skills gap has on universities.
The vicious cycle is: the quantitative skills gap affects student attrition rates, which in turn affects a universities performance and the amount of funding which is received in the next academic year. In return, the number of students who choose to enrol at a university and the university's National Student Survey (NSS) score are impacted.
However, there is hope for closing the quantitative skills gap and eliminating the impact it has across universities.
Positive quantitative skill gap gains can be generated through the adoption of flexible learning techniques (Cook, Watson & Vougas, 2019) and studies have shown that multimodal videos in higher education settings enhance learning through increased motivation and positive emotions (Pirhonen & Rasi, 2017) - which is why we created Boost.
Boost is an agile, multimedia platform with interactive bite-sized mathematical tutorial videos and practise questions created to support learning institution wide, either as an independent study tool or within the classroom. Boost supports diversity and inclusion through its multimedia content and the ability to access the platform from any device, anywhere and at any time. With Boost’s help, students are able to manage their cognitive load and universities can begin to tackle the quantitative skills gap and eliminate the impact it has in other areas.
The Boost team is exhibiting at Henry Stuart OnlineEd 2023, find us there to discuss how we can work together to close your universities quantitative skills gap.
Cook, S., Watson, D., & Vougas, D. (2019) Solving the quantitative skills gap: a flexible learning call to arms!, Higher Education Pedagogies, 4:1, 17-31, DOI: 10.1080/23752696.2018.1564880
Pirhonen, J., & Rasi, P. (2017) Student-generated instructional videos facilitate learning through positive emotions, Journal of Biological Education, 51:3, 215-227, DOI: 10.1080/00219266.2016.1200647
Snead, S. L., Walker, L., & Loch, B. (2022) Are we failing the repeating students? Characteristics associated with students who repeat first-year university mathematics, International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, 53:1, 227-239, DOI: 10.1080/0020739X.2021.1961899
Webb, R., Watson, D., & Cook, S. (2018). Is flipping the future? Assessing the effectiveness of two types of flipping the classroom. Under review, mimeo